


Self Loathing

by GreyLiliy



Series: Whumptober 2020 - Peter Parker [17]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Clones, Gen, Mistaken Identity, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27744868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyLiliy/pseuds/GreyLiliy
Summary: An imposter committed murder while dressed as Spider-Man, and Peter Parker must hunt him down before the police can catch him in the act. But what he finds is a man who has replicated him a bit too closely for comfort.
Relationships: Kaine (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker
Series: Whumptober 2020 - Peter Parker [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975432
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Self Loathing

**Author's Note:**

> _Whumptober 2020!  
>  Prompt No 17. I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING  
>  ~~Blackmail | Dirty Secret |~~ Wrongfully Accused  
> _
> 
> And we’ve reached No. 17! Still chugging along with these prompts. Lol. Only 14 left to go! I’ll probably be finishing in December, but at least it’ll be before the year is out!
> 
> Decided to go with “Wrongfully Accused” because that’s a common theme with Spider-Man (Ex. People mistaking Deadpool as him or The Bugle going after him). Decided to shake things up and use a character I haven’t actually read in the source material, but thought he’d work really well.
> 
> Honestly, Peter’s Clones are one of those things where I like the concept (a failed clone and a perfect clone both struggling to find their identity with the real Parker right around the corner), but the actual stories they’re in have never caught my attention. Either way, an angry clone felt like a good fit for “Wrongfully Accused” and I just went for it.
> 
> I had to read wiki summaries to get an idea of how to write Kaine, so hopefully I did the angry boy some justice. Either way, enjoy a loose take on a character for the sake of Whump.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

“It wasn’t you?” Peter asked, holding the Chameleon by his lapels. The man’s face twisted behind his white mask and he growled, but otherwise stayed still. The man deceived and twisted people’s perceptions, but he wasn’t a physical match once caught. “What do you mean it wasn’t you?”

“Just what I said!” Chameleon hissed back. He gripped Peter’s wrists and squeezed, breathing hard. “The last time I bothered you, I had to deal with Deadpool and I have no intention of repeating that!”

Peter believed him.

He dropped Chameleon back into his chair and took a step back with a hand to his head. “But if it wasn’t you, who the hell is running around as a perfect replica of me to commit crimes?”

“I should be flattered you thought of me first for a perfect copy, but I’m just annoyed,” The Chameleon said. “I don’t know, either. Maybe you should give Mysterio a call.”

“It wasn’t him, either,” Peter said. Mysterio wasn’t even in the country to commit the crime. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not? You’re a popular, public target—of course someone would want to imitate you to commit crimes so you take the fall.” The Chameleon straightened out his evening jacket and crossed his arms. “Maybe you really are too much of a good-natured idiot if you can’t put that together.”

Peter webbed his mouth shut and excused himself out a window.

The night air in the city welcomed him as he swung away from the man’s posh apartment, carefully to stay closer to the buildings than usual. When he got a block away, Peter ditched the web-slinging to stick to a careful crawl and sticking to the shadows.

The police were still looking for him.

Ditching his red and blue suit for his black stealth suit didn’t help much if he was still spotted swinging between the buildings with everyone in the city out looking for him. The Bugle didn’t have a photo of the imposter committing the crime (Jonah couldn’t afford to pay for a copy from the lucky photographer that managed to get the close up shots of the action), but there had been enough eye-witnesses and pictures circulating around it didn’t need one to run a front page story:

“Spider-Man Murders in Cold Blood!”

Someone dressed as Spider-Man in an identical replica suit had ripped a man apart in the most populated square in the city.

The enhanced strength had been real.

The footage Peter had managed to look at was damning. If he wasn’t Spider-Man, Peter would have been fooled, too. He’d looked at the high definition versions of the photos after sneaking into the other photographer’s apartment and sucked in a breath when he saw the same seam lines he himself sewed into his costume.

He triple-checked all of his costumes were at home and accounted for immediately after, and they all were.

But someone had studied his work enough to replicate it exactly.

And then used his image to kill someone.

The brutality of it and the strength made him think Deadpool at first, but that man hated it when people mixed Peter and himself up. The action didn’t fit the Chameleon’s usual goal of money, but he was the only other person Peter knew who put that much work into a disguise.

“Who did this?” Peter asked himself, sitting on a roof. He had to get to the bottom of things before the police caught him. Before he was blamed for a horrific crime he didn’t commit. “Where are you?”

“Right behind you.”

His spider-sense rang so hard in his head Peter winced. A weight slammed into Peter’s back from behind, throwing them both off the building and tumbling into the alley below. Peter swung around and kicked the man off him, but the other didn’t budge.

Instead, the stranger in the black suit grappled Peter in mid-air and locked his arms next to his sides and made sure Peter hit the ground first. They hit hard enough that the crack echoed in Peter’s ears.

There went a rib.

“You sure know how to lie low when you want to,” a raspy voice whispered in Peter’s ear. A kick to his gut sent a mouthful of spit through his teeth. “But it’s time to come out into the light and take your licks like a good little boy.”

Peter roared and threw the man off with a burst of strength fueled by sheer irritation. The other man laughed and rolled away. Peter stood, finding himself face to face with a man of similar build in a replica of his own suit—right down to the same missed stitch that no one but him would notice.

“Who are you?” Peter asked. “And where did you get that suit.”

“I made it.” The imposter patted his chest. “There’s nothing you can do that I can’t.”

Peter took a fighting position. “Why did you kill that man dressed as me?”

“Killed two birds with one stone,” the other man replied. “I killed my creator and was able to make your life miserable in the process. Win, win for me.”

“Creator?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” the man said. He cracked his knuckles and leaned forward. “Not when you’ll be spending the rest of your life rotting in jail.”

Peter dodged when the man’s tackle triggered his spider-sense. He threw a punch in return, but the other man ducked out of the way just as easy. The man laughed and went for another hit, but wasn’t fast enough to get around Peter’s spider-sense.

The two of them continued to throw hits back and forth, but neither landed.

It was almost like the other man had an equal spider-sense telling him to dodge the danger. Peter’s gut twisted with every blow dodged and every move of the other man’s body—something wasn’t right.

It wasn’t just the costume that appeared like a perfect replica.

“Who are you?” Peter asked, jumping back. They both breathed hard. Neither had taken a hit, but they were both exhausted from the exertion. “Tell me!”

“I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you,” the other man laughed. “It’s not like anyone would believe you.”

The man ripped off his mask, squeezing it tight in his fingers.

His own hazel brown eyes stared back on a face that looked very much like his own—if not for the scarring trailing up the side of his cheek and over his eye.

“I think my official name is ‘Parker 3.0’ but I prefer Kaine, myself,” the man said. His voice sounded identical to Peter’s, indicating he’d been trying to disguise it with the rasp. “Kaine Parker has a nice ring to it, eh?”

Peter stared.

A chill ran through him as he saw his own face continue to twist in anger. It was his expression. His face. His curled lip. He wondered if Mysterio really was still in town, creating one hell of an illusion after maybe discovering his secret identity.

But there were no smoke or mirrors.

“Kaine,” Peter repeated back. “And your creator?”

“Dead,” Kaine repeated, gritting his teeth together. A vicious snarl left his lips that Peter had only heard from his own during his angriest and most dire moments. “And that’s all that maters.”

The man ran for Peter again, face free from his mask and twisted in fury.

“Do you know what it’s like to be a failed version of someone else?” Kaine asked, his body moving faster with each attempted strike. Peter was familiar with the concept—his own strength and speed grew faster with his will. Peter’s shock was no match for Kaine’s fury and conviction and the third punch landed, twisting a fist in Peter’s gut. “To be told that in a few years you’ll deteriorate and fall apart? That he’ll just ‘try again’ until he gets it right?”

A clone.

Kaine Parker was a clone. “Deterioration” would explain why parts of his face looked like Deadpool’s skin—he was falling apart, but didn’t have the healing factor to fix it.

Peter screamed when the man grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

“At first, when I sat alone in my cell waiting for the next test I thought about how nice it would be to trade places with you,” Kaine said, kneeing Peter in the side and throwing him on the ground. Kaine sat on his back and kept twisting his arm, holding him down with strength Peter couldn’t seem to find. “Even after finding out what a stressful nightmare your double life is, I envied it.”

Kaine kept twisting.

He put enough pressure to stress and cause pain, but not enough to break the limb.

“But then I was told about my genetic faults. That there was another in the pipeline to replace you and make you suffer,” Kaine whispered. “I was going to be replaced by another replacement and that was not acceptable.”

He snapped Peter’s arm.

“My first plan was to kill you in your bed and replace you,” Kaine said, standing up. Peter rolled over, holding his broken arm to his chest and sucking in air through his teeth. Kaine waved at his face, tapping the scarring. “But I’ll be dead too soon to make real use of it. Framing you and letting you rot in jail seems the better alternative.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” Peter said, breathing hard. “So why?”

“I guess our self-loathing goes just that deep,” Kaine said. He grabbed Peter’s chin and pulled his head up. The man’s anger disappeared into a sad resignation; a look Peter had seen far too many times in the mirror. “And I don’t want to go out alone.”

Kaine dropped Peter’s chin and grabbed the back of his head. He slammed it into the ground, cracking it hard into the pavement and leaving Peter a woozy, dizzy mess. He fished a phone out of the back of his costume, though Peter saw double of him the entire time.

Just as his eyes closed, he heard a deepened version of his voice say, “Police. I found Spider-Man in an alley.”


End file.
